


Cycles of Despair

by shsldespair



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Analysis, Character Analysis, Mental Health Issues, Meta, Other, Ultimate Despair (Dangan Ronpa), not fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 17:27:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18480919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shsldespair/pseuds/shsldespair
Summary: An analytical essay that argues for Super Dangan Ronpa 2 to be read as an allegory for mental health and recovery.





	Cycles of Despair

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published as part of Melete Zine vol. 1 (https://meletezine.tumblr.com/)

In the  _ Dangan Ronpa _ franchise, the concepts of hope and despair are ever-present. The first game presents this in a straightforward way, with a protagonist whose only talent is being a bit more optimistic than most defeating a villain who considers herself the human embodiment of Despair. The second game turns this on its head, revealing in a twist ending that the characters are actually the villains of the first with the memories of their crimes wiped and placed in a computer simulation designed to make them better people. Through these characters and the way their Despair is handled, the game allegorically describes mental illness, the toxic cycles it traps people in, and the hard work of true recovery. Despair is the illness itself, the temptation to give in to symptoms and allow it to rule your life, and the harm it causes to both the sufferer and those around them. Hope is the status quo, which is fine for neurotypical people but forces mentally ill people to ignore their symptoms, force past them, and pretend everything is fine for the sake of “normalcy”. The game then shows that the path to true recovery requires a strong support system, creative thinking, and faith in the future.

First, we have Despair. In the final trial of the first game, Junko Enoshima describes Despair as a “contagious” “natural phenomenon”, one which anyone can experience. The ultimate goal of Despair is to sow discord and chaos. She expands on this, saying “The world we live in is full to the brim of countless motives that make men kill one another [...] and bring Despair upon the world.” In this way, Despair functions much like real-life mental illness. It is something that can strike any person and manipulates your thoughts and actions into something harmful. Much like how many symptoms of mental illness are normal behaviors taken to a dark extreme, Despair is the manipulation of everyone’s capacity for violence. (This is not say that mentally ill people are all violent- that is a tired and statistically incorrect stereotype. However, for a set of symptoms to be classified as a disorder, they must somehow impair day-to-day function. Thus, there is always harm done by the illness, though it is most often harm turned inward.) Enoshima, as a cultivator of Despair, only seeks to find those “seeds of Despair” and help them grow into something that can choke the world.

In many ways, Enoshima represents not only the illness itself, but the culture that creates itself around mentally ill communities. There is the social theory of the “crab mentality”, which postulates how communities can become a toxic “race to the bottom”. One crab could easily crawl out of the bucket, but the ones below it drag it down. No one escapes, everyone gets eaten. Mentally ill circles often become a crab bucket in which people gain social capital through their sickness. It is easier, and often less painful in the short run, to sink into your symptoms and allow them to consume you. In the game, Enoshima encourages people to do exactly that with Despair. She invites them to give in to their worst impulses and become the worst versions of themselves. Though the atrocities they commit are most often against others, Trial 6 of Super Danganronpa 2 also references their horrific acts of self-mutilation, saying they “would senselessly destroy everything, even their families, their friends, their own bodies.” Indeed, one cannot be a member of Ultimate Despair without giving in to their misery and suffering—giving in to their own despair.

On the other side of the coin, we have Hope, exemplified by Makoto Naegi. He is one of the few who is impervious to Enoshima’s manipulations, mentally untouched by Despair. When the former followers of Despair are rounded up, he is the one that sees the good in them and attempts to rehabilitate them through the New World Program. He appears at the end of Super Danganronpa 2 to explain his plan for their redemption: erase their Despair selves entirely, memories an all, and give them a do-over. However, as Enoshima says, her “existence shows that the world WANTED Despair”. What he cannot understand is that terrible as it was, they followed her for a reason. Every single member of the cast has some form of trauma they used Despair to escape from. Their actions do not exist in a vacuum. Having never experienced Despair, Naegi cannot understand that it is a part of them, even if it is a negative one. To use a colloquialism, Naegi is Neurotypical Karen—the well-meaning but ultimately irritating friend that tries to help without having any idea how.

Much like suddenly taking away an addict’s vice, erasing their memories is a band-aid solution. Without support in place to alleviate the symptoms which caused someone to rely on an unhealthy coping mechanism, be it self-medication, self-loathing, or Despair, they will ultimately fall back into old (or worse) habits. When one has never felt Despair, it makes sense that removing Enoshima’s influence would remove the problem, as they would not realize she was only bringing out feelings that were always inside them. Much like someone advising their depressed friend to “just cheer up”, his solutions are superficial. He offers redemption, but no real opportunity for growth, change, or to solve the circumstances that lead them to follow Enoshima in the first place. Without that, he cannot truly help them.

In short, both options are bad. We are left with the unhealthy coping of Despair or the unresolved trauma of Hope. With only these options presented, how should one move on? To quote Hajime Hinata, “I won’t be forced to choose.” At the end of the game’s sixth trial, the surviving students are given two choices. First, they could  reset the simulation they’re inside, which will destroy the Enoshima virus that caused their killing game and rid the world of the last traces of her. However, they will also lose their memories again. They will forget they were ever members of Ultimate Despair, but also forget how they’ve grown over the course of the game and the sacrifices their dead classmates made. Alternatively, they could “graduate”, freeing themselves from the simulation. If they do this, the Enoshima virus will possess their dead friends’ bodies, effectively reanimating them, but they will not be quite themselves anymore and it will give Enoshima another opportunity to destroy the world. In short, they can sacrifice who they are to live in a false, safe paradise, or they can give in to what they really want (they want to leave the simulation, they want their friends back) at a terrible cost. Realizing how impossible this choice is, Enoshima taunts, “Both options are Hope! Both options are Despair! And this is how it ends! You’re gonna be trapped here FOREVER!” This is the cycle of mental illness. When trapped in the depths of it, it is easy to feel that your only options are to give in to suffering or force yourself to pretend nothing is wrong. Neither of those are real recovery.

In the end, what gives the survivors their ending is not Hope or Despair, it is each other. They intend to create an unknown future for themselves simply by trusting that they can. When presented with two buttons, one that resets the simulation and one that allows graduation, Sonia wonders what would happen if they just pressed them both at the same time. This brings Enoshima’s entire villain monologue to a screeching halt—she doesn’t know. None of them know. It is such an elegant solution to finding a third option where there is none. It calls to mind a famous anecdote about a woman with OCD who was overcome with panic that she had left her hair dryer plugged in and was going to burn her house down every time she tried to leave. Both of her options were terrible: quit her job, stop leaving the house, and go on disability, or live in a constant state of fear. Instead, she started bringing her hair dryer with her when she went places. A third option. As a “functional” person, you aren’t supposed to walk around with a hair dryer in your purse, just as you aren’t supposed to look at a set of buttons and press them at the same time. Often, the path to recovery is a simple one, but societal expectations and the desire to be normal prevent you from seeing it. Once the survivors saw their third option, it was only a matter of having the courage to take it. If they did, they would be headed into an unknown future. They may wake up as their Despair selves, they may not. Their comatose friends may never wake up. Those dedicated to eradicating Despair may just kill them all. However, they have faith that if they choose to move forward together, never forgetting their past sins but vowing not to recreate them, things will work out. Enoshima cannot comprehend this and asks how they are able to resist her Despair. Hinata simply replies, “We have faith in our own futures ... that’s what makes us different from you …”. Immersed in Despair, it is all she can see. They move past her taunts and jeers (and past their need for her Despair) the moment they choose to start on the path towards recovery.

In the end,  _ Super Dangan Ronpa 2 _ takes the simplistic “hope will triumph over despair if you believe in yourself” narrative of the first  _ Dangan Ronpa _ game and expands and improves it. One of the major themes of the franchise is that hope and despair are two sides of the same coin, feeding off of and creating each other. The message of  _ Super Dangan Ronpa 2 _ , which is to always move forward, even if it hurts, even when it’s hard, allows room to accept these cycles as a part of life and not be destroyed by them. Where the first game’s characters only had to defeat a cartoonishly evil villain, the second game adds nuance by having its characters be good people who took part in that evil. It tears down the idea that being “good” or “bad” is a natural state and shows that it is a choice to make- often a difficult one. It is the jumping off point for the entire rest of the franchise, and what causes it to resonate so deeply with people despite being a neon-colored cartoon horror game where a teddy bear convinces teenagers to murder each other. At its heart,  _ Dangan Ronpa _ creates a world where hope can be corrupt, despair can be comforting, good intentions can still lead to tragedy if not backed by action, and there is always a future to be found if we keep moving towards it.

 


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